Grit Lawless Part 33

"d.a.m.n your impudence!" he said. "What do you mean by that?"

"Why," asked Lawless imperturbably, "were you so anxious a month ago for my services and advice?"

"It was before Van Bleit's trial I wrote that letter... If you'd been on the spot we'd have hanged the brute."

"And why was my presence necessary to the carrying out of justice?"

The Colonel pulled savagely at his moustache. He was thinking, not so much of his present annoyance, but of the chance he believed had been lost of getting hold of the letters. He had come to consider it a practical certainty that had Lawless remained at his post success would have been achieved. He looked at the thin, scarred face, at the indolent grace of the outstretched limbs, and his strong sense of indignation, of having been somehow defrauded, increased. He had paid well for this man's services; he had a right to command them.

"Plainly, I couldn't hang him before getting hold of the letters," he said. "It might have been defeating my own ends. Had you been on the spot--as I had every right to expect you to be--we could have recovered them."

"Do you happen to know where they are?" Lawless asked.

"Denzil had them then... And Denzil without Van Bleit would be easy to deal with."

The man lounging in the chair suddenly sat up.

"You've been misinformed," he said. "Denzil never had those letters at any time in his charge. Van Bleit doesn't trust him... he's wise not to. We've a.s.sumed too much because Hayhurst got hold of them once...

That is the first and only time Van Bleit has risked having them in his possession. Those letters are safe--where you and I can't get them.

Van Bleit alone can touch them." He laughed shortly. "The search has narrowed considerably since we met."

"What the devil are you driving at? ... You talk as though you know where the letters are," the Colonel said sharply.

"So I do, man... They're in the Bank, of course."

"In the Bank!" There was silence for a few seconds. Then in a voice that had lost its quick tone of authority Colonel Grey asked quietly: "How do you know?"

"Know! I don't know... And yet I do know. Where would _you_ keep important papers that you feared might be stolen? ... where would I? ...

In the Bank, of course. I wonder we never thought of it before. It was Hayhurst misled us. Because he got hold of them, we took Van Bleit for a fool--which he isn't... Scoundrel every inch of him, but no fool.

I had it from himself that the letters were safe from us. He didn't mean to give me a clue... I jumped to it. I've had him staying with me since his acquittal."

He laughed mirthlessly at the expression of astonishment in his listener's face, and, as though the recollection of his recent meeting with Van Bleit excited him, got up from his chair and took a turn the length of the room, and then came back.

"I thought I had a good game on... that I had only to get hold of Van Bleit and the letters were mine," he said. "You nearly upset my plans by that unexpected move of yours which cost so dear in the end... As it chanced, it wouldn't have mattered had you frustrated them altogether.

What made you interfere, as you did, when you had entrusted me with the affair?"

He paused in front of the Colonel, and waited for his answer, regarding him fixedly with his keen, penetrating eyes. The Colonel appeared, not so much unequal, as disinclined to reply.

"I thought you had lost your head," he said at last. "Your manner of leaving Cape Town was not calculated to inspire confidence."

"And that's the reason you failed to pay the amount agreed upon into my account last month?"

"That was my reason--yes." He stared back into the dominating, inscrutable grey eyes, and his own were stern and unyielding. "You've come to me to-night with a request for more money, I suppose?"

"I have. I'm short--in debt, in fact. I must have something at once to go on with." There was a perceptible pause. The Colonel ended it.

"I'm not paying for work that isn't performed," was his curt response to this appeal. "You'll have to satisfy me that you are earning your pay before you get anything further. Suppose you give an account of what you have done up to the present,--of what you purpose doing in the near future that justifies a further outlay. There has been nothing but a verbal agreement between us, which is no more binding on one side than on the other--save for the final agreement you hold for a sum down when you deliver, or cause to be delivered, the packet of letters into my hands. When I undertook to make you a monthly allowance, it was on the understanding that you pursued your quest with conscientious persistence; there was no question of leisure for the following of your amus.e.m.e.nts. I have not been exacting in demanding hitherto a full account of service rendered in exchange for money received. It has occurred to me that you might have given a fuller account than you have done unasked."

"Probably I should have," Lawless replied, "had I not been perfectly aware of the distrust with which you regard me, which you have never succeeded in controlling or concealing since you first engaged my services. You have--whether intentionally or not, I can't say--insulted me more than enough. You have openly questioned my honesty. And you expect me to swallow all that--for a consideration... And I do swallow it... Why? ... I hardly know... For the consideration, perhaps."

He moved away to the window, halted there, and turned sharply upon his heel.

"You want to hear what I've done," he said, coming back, and hovering uncertainly between a small table on which a lamp burnt and the chair from which he had risen. He was too excited to seat himself. Colonel Grey watched him curiously, the old struggle between liking for the man and distrust of him still battling for the supremacy. It was odd that, in spite of the distrust, in face of prejudice, the liking remained.

"I've been in the Stellenbosch district ever since leaving Cape Town--"

"Alone?" interrupted the Colonel.

"Not alone--no! ... I went there solely on your business--"

"With a companion?"

Lawless swore at this further interruption.

"d.a.m.n it! ... yes," he answered almost violently.--"On your business-- with a companion. And, what's more to the point, that same companion is following up Van Bleit now."

The Colonel leant forward and stared at the speaker aghast.

"That--that _woman_!" he spluttered.

"Have a care!" Lawless said curtly. "The agent that I have employed is working for my sake, not for yours; and is likely to prove more successful than either you or I could hope to be at the present stage of affairs. Van Bleit recognises an enemy in me."

"I won't have it," the Colonel shouted. "You were not justified in employing an agent on your own authority... A--woman like that is not to be trusted on such a delicate mission. The letters would be as dangerous in her possession as they are in Van Bleit's... You are a fool if you believe she would hand them over to you... She mustn't be allowed to get hold of them."

"She won't," Lawless replied calmly. "You forget, I tell you he hasn't them in his charge."

"How can you possibly be sure of that? ... And if it's true, where's the use in following him?"

"At our first meeting," Lawless reminded him, and took one of his short sharp turns between the table and chair and back again, "when I undertook this job, I told you that if I failed in getting the letters I would kill your man... That's what I'm after now. I'm keener on it than on anything else."

Colonel Grey sat back in his seat and crossed one knee over the other.

"You need reminding in your turn that you are not paid to follow your inclination... Will you please go on with the story? I am curious to learn how it came about that Van Bleit boasted to you that the letters were out of our reach. What grounds have you for a.s.suming such a statement to be true?"

"Grounds!" Lawless laughed again, with a savage sound in the mirth.

His mind had reverted to the scene on the veld in the early morning when Van Bleit had sat with a revolver covering him, and a murderous finger crooked round the trigger. "I have had what I believed to be those letters in my hands--a dummy packet got up in order to trick me. I fell into the trap with an ease that astounds me when I think of it. I've been flogged like a Kaffir--by Van Bleit... bound by the wrists and lashed." He touched his inflamed and injured eye. "I haven't recovered the proper use of that yet," he said. "I doubt that I ever shall. What little self-respect I had he has deprived me of... Perhaps that's why I don't care a d.a.m.n when you openly question my honesty. That's a full report of my doings, up to the present. I am now waiting until my decoy has got Van Bleit in tow--then I am going to face him again."

He fell to pacing the floor once more with his hands clasped behind him, and his eyes filled with an expression of uncontrollable hate.

"When a man holds life cheaply--as I do,--when he's nothing to look forward to, and very little to look back upon, he makes an ugly enemy...

You know something--not much, but still something--of my past. As I've gone along Life's High Road there has been a hand occasionally to rest in mine for a brief while; but at the first stumble it has been withdrawn,--not one has ever clasped mine more firmly to help me over the difficulties in the way... I'm not whining to you in self-excuse.

I've knocked up against hard facts all my life... I'm hard myself, which may account for much. If it were not for a military training, I should probably hit you in the face when you accuse me of applying to my own use the money I have received from you. As it is, I ask you to withdraw that charge. It's possibly the only creditable thing I have achieved in life, but I have managed to steer clear of fraud."

He put a hand in his breast pocket, and, withdrawing a notebook, took from between its leaves a paper which he tossed upon the table.

"There's the agreement you referred to a while since... You can tear it across; it's not worth the paper it's written on. I'll stick to my part of the bargain. I'll get the letters for you, if they're to be got.

But I want no other reward than the squaring of my account with Van Bleit. For the rest--the funds to go on with--"

The Colonel stopped him with a gesture, and, rising, crossed to a desk near the window. He unlocked a drawer, took from it a cheque-book, and drawing up a cheque in Lawless' favour, and signing it, pa.s.sed it to him with a pen to fill in the amount. Lawless supplied the figures.